tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41834093776152648452011-04-22T09:28:15.123+05:30For few, my snap and the "About Me" section at this blog may look the most mysterious things in the world. For few others, me myself would be the notoriously mysterious thing ever existed. For all others, here is a place to gobble few mysteries ...Amit Gawandenoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4183409377615264845.post-47627373982188616532008-06-18T22:35:00.002+05:302008-06-18T22:56:02.184+05:302008-06-18T22:56:02.184+05:30<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">BC 80-60</span><span style="font-style: italic;">. Water gushed over its body. Soaked with wetness, it sank deep down the sea throat. It hit the bottom with a thud. Mud clinged its body as a flea would to a dog. Light faded and so did any hope for seeing rays again. It knew its potential, its uniqueness. It knew it can't get lost so soon. It knew it had to be found. What it didn't know was the wait is going to be so long ...<br /><br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">April 1900</span>. As <span style="font-style: italic;">Elias Stadiatis </span>dived 42-60 m deep down the water off tiny Antikythera island, he saw, what can be termed as, another wreck of a large cargo ship which usually faces a pre-mature death only to be mined and dug out by sponge divers. What Elias Stadiatis did was nothing unique of sort for his fraternity. But little did he know that this wreck contains one of the most precious thing, far more precious than the statues and jewelry. The irony was it lay there for almost 2 years as nothing but a plain piece of rock. It was in 1902, May 17th that the gear wheel embeded in the rock caught <span style="font-style: italic;">Valerios Stais</span>' stare. It knew it was time for the world to know its true worth. It knew the time has come ...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_12OSnRKdLTQ/SFk_3YmKn4I/AAAAAAAABPw/QeIy9Yjmldw/s1600-h/AntikytheraMechanism.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_12OSnRKdLTQ/SFk_3YmKn4I/AAAAAAAABPw/QeIy9Yjmldw/s320/AntikytheraMechanism.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213268264385945474" border="0" /></a>Antikythera Mechanism is supposed to be world's first Analog Computer. The level of miniaturization and complexity of its parts can be compared to no clock prior to 18th Century. It was only after 1000 years that technical artifacts of this complexity came into existence. Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University, who led the research on this expensive mechanism, has got this to say about it.<br /><blockquote>"Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully. In terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."</blockquote>A century has been lost for finding the exact purpose of this entity. What was earned was nothing but plain mystery. No answers. Just speculations that it has to be a tool designed to calculate astronomical positions during a period of 150-100 BC. It is these speculations that just add to its mystery.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In a period when common people viewed solar and lunar eclipses as superstitious events linked with fear, when law of gravity was not discovered to understand why heavenly bodies moved, planetary motion was as nebulous as a mud, who built this mechnism?</span> Why was the technology on board a ship and was pre-maturely lost? Did really our ancestors at that time were knowledgable equivalent to what we are today? Was that knowledge lost just because of lack of means for transmitting knowledge? If that's not enough, the compactness designer was aiming at by reducing the size of the device does make one compare it to modern laptops hinting it being mainly a mobile device.<br /><br />So i guess we are left quite puzzled with this whole saga. Were all the written laws today already unhooded far time back just lost for a mean to transfer that knowledge? Its we to think ...<br /><br />Sources: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism">Wikipedia</a><br /> <a href="http://www.neatorama.com/2008/01/25/the-wonderful-world-of-early-computing/">Neatorama</a><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4183409377615264845-4762737398218861653?l=mysteriesabode.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Amit Gawandenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4183409377615264845.post-15154421151036451002008-06-18T19:38:00.000+05:302008-06-18T20:51:57.348+05:302008-06-18T20:51:57.348+05:30<div style="text-align: justify;">The title does sound, atleast for me, a bit self-boasting one. I dunno about others for whom 'being mysterious' may quite well turn out to be 'yuck'ish. (I know even my use of words sometimes is mysterious. You will surely, as you roam round this blogosphere, come across many.)<br /><br />Anyways mysteries has always kept on the edge of my seat. I have cherished even the worst of the mystery movies ever made. I even have a darn respect (!!!) for the makers of few of the movies, whose reason for existence itself was a mystery. Same goes for books or for TV shows. But more than anything else, what turn me on are the mysterious real life experiences. I have spend lots of my network bandwidth digging through the news stories about however foolish but mysterious incidences that happen around us. And it was this interest of mine that led to the existence of this blog.<br /><br />Along the journey, i will keep on jotting few mysteries i, over the net, bump into. The stories may not be fully inclusive of all details as i have no intention to 'wikipedia'ize the blog. Though they surely will provide required links for fully understanding them.<br /><br />Let the journey begin ...<br /><br />P.S. For those few who have pre-maturely crashed over this blog before finding any mysterious entry, i do blog my other part which is rather more on a funnier side at another place and that is called <a href="http://elatedamit.wordpress.com">Realm of Randomness</a>. Make this the source for your journey for now ....<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4183409377615264845-1515442115103645100?l=mysteriesabode.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Amit Gawandenoreply@blogger.com0